Hide and Seek
by kiku65
Summary: Sequel to sablecain's I Went Down to the Woods Today, written with their kind permission. Carsoncentric, oneshot. Whump!


**A/N:** Well, time's come to dive in to SGA for a second time... following in the footsteps of others (as it were :). Somewhat longer than the fic that spawned it, but then again I am incapable of writing less than two pages of anything.

**Spoilers: **Sunday, and Vengeance (a bit). Speculation only, so will probably become AU after Season Four, but what the hey.

* * *

**o.O.o**

_You underestimate your own value... _doctor

_- Michael, Misbegotten _

**o.O.o**

He was wandering through a nightmare: real or not he couldn't say.

At first he had run. At first he had driven himself from a damp cell lit with darkness to the endless maze beyond; he had run and run and run until his legs filled with lead, until the air had tinned in his chest and made his blood scald through his heart and out of the scrapes on his bare feet and hands.

Now he walked, feeling his way down dark tunnels washed with putrid green light and highlighted with shadows. He no longer cared if he lost himself in the twisted labyrinth of diseased stone, because if he couldn't figure out where he was going, how could the one he could feel watching, the monster he ran from without running?

Logic would kill him here; folly might bring him home.

_Home_, home, where was home? What was home? Home was _a city floating on water_ in a field of heather _with his friends around him_ and his mum at the door. It was_ a man with brown eyes whose life he had saved_ his wee sister and brothers; it smelt of _that blue jello they always had in the infirmary_, and his mum's home-made clootie dumplings. _Fishing with Rodney_, playing with his brothers until the sun set.

At home there was _fire, flames all around him, and he had closed his eyes to die _always a fire in the hearth.

Die, dieing, dead. There had been fire, and he was dead.

Dead people never went home.

Blood smeared behind him from stinging cuts, dripping in burning rain from his hands. He had screamed and clawed at the walls before, until he had found the opening, running and running until he had wandered in the pathways of his own nightmare. He limped on, dreaming of fishing and games in the sunset.

"Let's play a new game."

He stopped between one breath and the next, his heart pausing with his feet as the echoes died away. _No, no, no. _He knew that whisper. The monster was back.

"Close your eyes."

He did, but it was in despair. He felt the monster smile, and coo:

"Count to ten."

He took off again, scrapes on naked soles ripping open on rough stone, making a red-green-black trail behind him, a path of bloody footprints he had to outrun. He might be dead, but he didn't want to die.

"One."

Green-black-grey zipped by in a feverish blur; the mists swirled around him and condensed to cobwebs in his lungs.

"Two."

A doorway made of dulled metal loomed before him, slammed open, gaped behind like an open mouth.

"Three."

Claws snatched at him in the room within; scalpels and tongs and knives showing gory teeth, tearing through his thin shirt, scratched at his arms to hold him for their master.

"Four."

They were ripped off, blood covering his skin in a second layer. He gasped as he made it through.

"Five."

Night stretched away before him; he ran into it with speed born of terror.

"Six."

He slammed into an unseen wall, cried out in pain, then carried on down the turning.

"Seven."

Breath sobbed in his lungs, gulps of air drawn from black to black, then out to black again.

"Eight."

He could feel it watching. He could hear it laugh.

"Nine."

There was nowhere, nowhere to run to, nowhere to go...

"Ten."

An opening yawned darkness before him, a mouth to hell. Knowing the devil was behind him instead of in front, he leapt into it gladly.

"Ready or not..."

The room was small, as small as the cell, and as bare as a grave. He huddled down in the farthest corner and hugged his knees.

"_Here I come._"

Silence. The world stopped breathing.

He felt scalding tears slip down his face, dripping onto shaking hands to wash the blood away. His body cried for him to keep running, shook uncontrollably when he didn't. Words no-one could hear murmured a spell from nights in childhood to keep the monsters away.

_Close my eyes, he can't see me, curl up tight, he won't get me... _

He closed his eyes, curled into a ball, and waited.

A beat sounded. At first he thought it was his own blood humming in his ears, but it levelled out into something worse.

Footsteps.

_He can't see me, he won't get me..._

They came closer, pausing outside.

_Close my eyes, curl up tight._

Carson buried his face in his arms, curled so tightly he thought, _hoped_ he might fade away to nothing.

They came inside, pad-padding like a cat's. He heard leather creak as the monster knelt before him.

He was crying in earnest now; pride forgotten in terror. A whispered sigh made his hair ruffle; a hand tangled through it, smoothing it back. His heart jack-hammered under the touch like a snared rabbit in the grip of a hunter.

Talons gripped under his chin, tilting his head back almost gently, a silent command opening his eyes. Terrified blue met predator's gold.

The monster smiled, fangs glinting in the rotten light.

"Found you," said Michael.


End file.
